Workers Fired After Organizing to Oppose 60-80 Hour Work Weeks with No Overtime Pay

Former workers of Flaum Appetizing lead a protest outside the house of Flaum owner, Moshe Grudhut. Flaum Appetizing is a Brooklyn based kosher food processor that illegally fired 17 hard-working and dedicated employees. These workers were fired after organizing to oppose 60-80 hour work weeks with no overtime pay. A National Labor Relations Board hearing in the fall of 2008 found that Flaum had violated the workers' rights under the National Labor Relations Act, and the ruling ordered the workers to be reinstated and receive back pay. Flaum lost on appeal and has refused to comply with the orders. A new NLRB hearing is set for November 9th.

Workers at Flaum prepare, process, pack, and deliver large orders of kosher foodstuffs to supermarkets around New York. The campaign for justice at Flaum is being carried out by the Focus on the Food Chain initiative, a joint effort of non-profit organization Brandworkers and the Industrial Workers of the World labor union (NYC Branch). The Focus on the Food Chain campaign promotes a sustainable food system which incorporates respect for workers' rights. By empowering employees with social change tools, Brandworkers wins respect for labor rights and challenges corporate misconduct. The Industrial Workers of the World is a grassroots labor union dedicated to democracy at work.

Industrial Workers of the World

Blog of the Moment: Workforced

Companies have the upper hand over job applicants because there are more people than there are positions to fill. Such are the laws of supply and demand that companies demand you supply them with hours of your time before they will let you anywhere near a job offer.

Aptitude tests are the first hurdle in the calisthenic catastrophe that is the hiring process. As my uncle used to say: “If you can’t put a person into boxes they’re not worth knowing.” He’s in jail now.

Most aptitude tests today are online, which defeats the point. Even a nincompoop can ask someone else to take the test for them. I remember doing very badly during an online aptitude test so I yanked the internet cable out of the computer. A quick email later to claim a connection failure and I had a second chance. How very sneaky! Do you think I got any bonus points for lateral thinking?



Workforced

The Workplace Is No Place To Earn A Living

Turning workers into robots without rights (except the right to quit and become a robot somewhere else) is the key to the "productivity" of the state capitalist system. But there has remained a productivity/wage gap, with wages remaining stagnant or not increasing anywhere near the rise in productivity. The companies most of us work for reap the benefit of our wage slavery, while we, the workers, lose ground and can barely maintain our standard of living. Meanwhile we toil in monotonous jobs that most of us hate, going home each night to spend a few hours watching mindless "entertainment" or subtle or not so subtle statist propaganda on the television, and spending the entire week looking forward to our weekend, when we might have a little time to actually be human.


Frederick Winslow Taylor introduced the idea of "scientific" management to the workplace.

From Wikipedia:

Taylor's approach is also often referred to, as Taylor's Principles, or frequently disparagingly, as Taylorism. Taylor's scientific management consisted of four principles:

1. Replace rule-of-thumb work methods with methods based on a scientific study of the tasks.
2. Scientifically select, train, and develop each employee rather than passively leaving them to train themselves.
3. Provide "Detailed instruction and supervision of each worker in the performance of that worker's discrete task" (Montgomery 1997: 250).
4. Divide work nearly equally between managers and workers, so that the managers apply scientific management principles to planning the work and the workers actually perform the tasks.



Taylor had very precise ideas about how to introduce his system:

It is only through enforced standardization of methods, enforced adoption of the best implements and working conditions, and enforced cooperation that this faster work can be assured. And the duty of enforcing the adoption of standards and enforcing this cooperation rests with management alone.

Workers were supposed to be incapable of understanding what they were doing. According to Taylor this was true even for rather simple tasks.

'I can say, without the slightest hesitation,' Taylor told a congressional committee, 'that the science of handling pig-iron is so great that the man who is ... physically able to handle pig-iron and is sufficiently phlegmatic and stupid to choose this for his occupation is rarely able to comprehend the science of handling pig-iron.

The introduction of his system was often resented by workers and provoked numerous strikes.

h/t Check Your Premises

A few really annoying things about job hunting

1) Applications that make you retype EVERYTHING in your damn resume. It takes forever to fill out and defeats the entire point of having a resume (to have all the relevant information nestled in one spot).

2) Job postings that preach about all the computer skills you need to be hired, even though the web geniuses constructing the website/application can't figure out how to properly hyperlink two friggin' pages together.

3) Psuedo-scientific "personality profiles." You had better be outgoing! Even if you're applying to be a midnight janitor.

4) Nosy applications that want to know *everything* you've *ever* done. How many times did you take a piss today? HR wants to know!

More when I think of them.

Anarcho-syndicalism working in Argentina?

This is an old article, but fascinating nonetheless.

Take note, Democrats: people can manage their own economic activity perfectly fine without totalitarian "czars" or the imperialist-corporatist Obama.

Begging For It

A co-worker has recently been fantasizing about quitting his job and becoming a panhandler. He dreams of easy money in Beverly Hills or Pacific Palisades, or at least of not having to drag his tired ass to work everyday and follow the orders of bosses who are dumber than he is. His fantasy is only a small symptom of the underlying hatred of going to a job that is shared by nearly all workers. Everyone lives for the weekend, and when Friday rolls around it's always "Thank God" time. It's a terrible way to live.


We've heard the stories of professional panhandlers making as much or more per day as wage earners, only all tax free (which is what justice requires for wage earners too, only there ain't no justice in this "land of the slaves, home of the cowardly").

Aren't beggars, though, some kind of parasite? No more so than everyone who receives a government check, in fact, beggars are much less parasites, as the transactions that occur between the givers and the receivers are voluntary. Plus, the beggars at least are telling those damn bosses to take those jobs and shove them. I wish I could do that!

So, though I usually refuse to give even a dime to panhandlers (figuring that they've actually got more money on them than I do) I may start contributing now and then. It's the anti-work thing to do.

Bob Black's "The Abolition of Work"

No one should ever work.

Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you’d care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working.

The Abolition of Work

Please, Sir, May I Have Some More Toilet Paper While I'm Brushing My Teeth?

Well, I've begun brushing my teeth at work. I know many do this already, but I'd never seen anybody where I work do it until a few days ago. I think about all the snacking and lunch eating and donut munching that goes on there, and wonder that any of them have any teeth left at all, considering that all that crap stays on their yellowed pearly whites all day. I mean, I know we've got a dental plan and all, but why subject yourself to dental torture. So I saw this guy brushing his teeth in the bathroom, and I decided it wasn't for me (the bathroom, not the brushing). Who wants to see someone rinsing and swishing and spitting in the communal sinks? So I bought myself the elements of a "dental kit"; a folding travel toothbrush (with anti-bacterial bristles), a tiny tube of Crest, dental floss on a stick (100 count pack), and 2 cute little bottles of mouthwash. I park on the upper parking lot, and pull in backwards. With my trunk open and me against the wall, no one can see my activities. So that's where I brush and swish and spit. It actually feels better having a clean mouth, plus, since I don't want to be brushing all day long, I've found myself reluctant to eat a lot of junk. I've been taking salads to work and snacking on things like apples instead of chips and cookies and all the other "foods" that leave so much residue on your teeth.

On another note, the restrooms at work have recently experienced shortages of essentials such as toilet paper and paper towels. A budget cutting measure in these tough economic times, perhaps? People got so fed-up that they (the powers that be) finally corrected the situation the other day. The stalls were once again suitable for number two, and the water at the sinks once again faced a paper nemesis. We wondered, though, if at some point very soon, janitorial duties would be added to our list of tasks in yet another effort to consolidate and make due with fewer slaves employees. "Sorry, Mr. Customer, Sir, but I can't help you right now. It's my turn to vacumn the floor."

Work to Live or Live to Work?

Do Americans work to live or are they workaholics who live to work? We all seem to know someone whose life revolves around their work. It takes (or appears to) priority over everything else in their life, including their spouse and family. I once saw a segment on the news (or one of those news "shows" like 20/20 or Dateline) about foolish workaholics who are frighteningly addicted to their jobs or business. One woman even had a setup so that she wouldn't miss a call while she was showering! Sure, America was supposedly built on the work ethic, and there is no doubt that it's sorely lacking in some, but there are other values people. After all, life is short, and with the limited time we all have, we should seek balance in our lives, including plenty of leisure.

I once worked in sales for a company selling computer software. I had met a young, very sweet woman there from Germany. She was in the US living here and staying with relatives. We had several long conversations, but something that came up again and again was her impression that in the United States you are basically on your own. She expressed a strong desire to return to Germany where she wouldn't have to be afraid all the time of losing a job and then feeling completely on her own and possibly forced to live in her car or on the street (as a side note, at a couple of places I've worked, I've known co-workers who were living out of their cars and sleeping in them because they could no longer afford to rent an apartment). Barak Obama has also mentioned what he called the "you're on your own" society.

Europeans also apparently take many more vacations then Americans do, as discussed here.

It seems unfair to me that this way of thinking doesn't appear to exist over in the U.S. It's not just a case of being wealthy, as holidays abroad seem to apply to almost everyone in Europe, whether a cleaning lady or a lawyer.

And from some of the comments:

Definitely a difference. One reason must be the complete lack of paid holidays poor US citizens get!
Here in Sweden I get 30 PAID holidays a year - plus a lot of other days off like Christmas Eve, Easter and so on...

Having lived in Denmark and experienced their 6 weeks of vacation a year and family-friendly work policies, I agree with you that the American corporate culture is terrible. Here in the US people are lucky to get 2 weeks of vacation a year, and God forbid if they get sick.

Well...US is a capitalist country where people are hungry to make money. Also, they don't have a national regulation like Denmark, where one has to take 5 weeks of holidays. It's mandatory!
That's why I'm looking forward to move to DK, to experience a more relaxing life with tons of fun.

My husband says it's a difference of values--we value money and things, Europeans value expierences and memories.

So, is it true? Do Americans work too much?

Unexcused Absence

Just an alert, you have five unexcused absences in the past six months, a sixth would place you in disciplinary action resulting in a verbal warning; once you receive a warning, any additional unexcused absence will result in a written warning; warnings take 6 months to go away, in other words, you cannot have an unexcused absence for six months after receiving a warning; if you have any questions let me know.

Thank you.

All I can say to this unwarranted threat is @#%#@&! But I'll say more anyway. The entire office has been sick this cold and flu season, some of us several times. It's gone around and around and even hit the managers (boo-hoo) but of course it's the peons who are punished, the poor slobs working full-time for slave wages. So the above went out as an email to more than a few. One poor shaken woman, clearly concerned (there have been several layoffs already) rushed to explain that she had used her sick days for the absences, so why was she receiving the warning. It didn't matter though, sick days or no, if you didn't go to the doctor and get a note it is considered "unexcused". Excuse me? They pay you for the day, but it's "unexcused"?

And what's all this gotta go to the doctor crap? No wonder medical costs in this country are so high, with idiotic rules like this. Must we go to the doctor every time we're too sick to go to work? I was sick and it cleared up on its own. Dana was sick and she went to the doctor, but the second time she didn't, same recovery time, though, in both cases. Thanks, corporate assholes, for clogging our waiting rooms because of your evil nonsense.

I was too sick to work one day, voice gone, couldn't talk anyway without coughing, was given another job that day by the manager, who could see clearly I couldn't talk that day. And yet, when I called in the next day, barely able to speak, it was reported as an "unexcused absence" because I didn't go to the goddamned doctor! They all knew I was sick, I didn't call out to go to the beach. I was so sick I actually wanted to go to work rather than stay home.

And even if you have doctor's notes for every absence, as a very sick friend of mine did, they'll still fire your ass if you miss too many days. It happened to her, and they had no mercy on her. Being sick was no excuse, they said.

Final word to the little prick who sent the email: Shove your unexcused absence up your rotten smelly capitalist ass, you lying lackey for the man!